Using electronic information resources to solve cultural translation problems. Differences between students and professional translators

Date08 October 2018
Published date08 October 2018
Pages1293-1317
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2018-0033
AuthorChristian Olalla-Soler
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet
Using electronic information
resources to solve cultural
translation problems
Differences between students and
professional translators
Christian Olalla-Soler
Department of Translation and Interpretation and East Asian Studies,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of electronic information resources to solve
cultural translation problems at different stages of acquisition of the translators cultural competence.
Design/methodology/approach A process and product-oriented, cross-sectional, quasi-experimental
study was conducted with 38 students with German as a second foreign language from the four years of the
Bachelors degree in Translation and Interpreting at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and ten
professional translators.
Findings Translation students use a wider variety of resources, perform more queries and spend more time
on queries than translators when solving cultural translation problems. The studentsinformation-seeking
process is generally less efficient than that of the translators. Training has little impact on the studentsuse of
electronic information resources for this specific purpose, since all students use them similarly regardless of
the year they are in.
Research limitations/implications The study has been conducted with a small sample and only one
language pair from a single pedagogical context. The tendencies observed cannot be generalised to the whole
population of translation students.
Practical implications This paper has implications for translator training, as it encourages the
development of efficient information-seeking processes for the resolution of cultural translation problems.
Originality/value Unlike other studies, this paper focusses on a specific translation problem type.
It provides information related to the studentsinformation-seeking strategies for the resolution of cultural
translation problems, which can be useful for translation training.
Keywords Acquisition of the translators cultural competence, Cultural translation problems,
Process-oriented research, Quasi-experimental study, Translation competence,
Use of electronic information resources
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to present partial results of a quasi-experimental study on the
acquisition of the translators cultural competence in the case of GermanSpanish
translation. Specifically, we present the results regarding the use of electronic information
resources to solve cultural translation problems at different stages of the acquisition of the
translators cultural competence. Cultural competence is defined as the translators
capacity to mobilise and contrast his/her knowledge about the source culture and the target
culture in relation to a cultural phenomenon perceived in the source text, in order to achieve
an acceptable solution in the target text(Olalla-Soler, 2017, p. 673).
Informationliteracy is defined as theset of integrated abilitiesencompassing the reflective
discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and
the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities
of learning(ACRL, 2016, p. 3). It has been considered an essential component of the
translators professional activity(Pinto and Sales, 2008; Masseyand Ehrensberger-Dow, 2011)
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 74 No. 6, 2018
pp. 1293-1317
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-02-2018-0033
Received 24 February 2018
Revised 26 July 2018
Accepted 1 August 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
1293
Using
electronic
resources for
translation
and has been included in many models oftranslation competence (Nord,1988; Hurtado Albir,
1996; Kelly,2002; PACTE, 2003, 2017e; Shreve,2006; Alves and Gonçalves, 2007;Katan, 2008;
EMT, 2009; Göpferich,2009). The emergence of onlineinformation has increased the available
resources with which translators can seek information, it has made the information-seeking
process more efficient (by using Boolean operators, querying specialised databases, etc.) and
has almost left behindall use of paper-based informationresources when translating (Massey
and Ehrensberger-Dow, 2011; Hirci, 2013; Kuznik, 2017; Kuznik and Olalla-Soler, 2018).
Despite these recent developments, there is scarce research into the use of electronic
information resources by translators (see Section 2). Research into the acquisition of
information-seeking skills of translation students is also sparse, and, in most cases, the
available studies focus on information-seeking processes to solve translation problems in
general. Given the high frequency in which translators must solve cultural translation
problems and the importance of culture in the translation task (Gutiérrez Bregón, 2016), it is
remarkable that such a research gap exists in Translation Studies concerning the use of
information resources and the acquisition of information-seeking skills to solve specific
translation problems. Thus, it has become a necessity for translator trainers to investigate
the use of information resources for specific purposes, as in the case of the resolution of
cultural translation problems. As Sales et al. (2018) point out, translating requires a constant
search for information. During the translation process, translators identify their information
needs, define information-seeking strategies, select the most useful information resources,
assess the results of their strategies and apply the results to their translation process. These
processes need to be trained in specific courses on information science applied to translation
and in translation courses. Moreover, these processes are especially relevant when solving
cultural translation problems, which are defined as source-text elements of a cultural
nature that cause a translation difficulty during the translation process(Olalla-Soler, 2017,
p. 671). Translators often need to expand and complement their internal cultural knowledge
(i.e. knowledge about the source and target cultures which has been acquired before a
cultural translation problem has been identified and solved in order to make efficient
decisions when translating). Given that cultural knowledge is inexhaustible (Witte, 2000),
translators need to develop their information-seeking skills to translate. This is also
applicable to specialised translation, where information literacy plays a paramount role
(Galán-Mañas, 2011; Orozco and Sánchez-Gijón, 2011) since translators may have to
translate terms from specific areas of specialisation with which they may not be familiar.
This paper is intended to complement and expand the existing research on the
acquisition of information-seeking skills in translator training by focussing on cultural
translation problems. To this end, three research questions were posed:
RQ1. Do translators and translation students differ in the way they use electronic
information resources to solve cultural translation problems?
RQ2. How does the use of electronic information resources to solve cultural translation
problems change with the acquisition of the translators cultural competence?
RQ3. How does the use of electronic information resources to solve cultural translation
problems relate to the quality of translation solutions?
Within a study on the acquisition of the translators cultural competence (Olalla-Soler, 2017),
a process and product-oriented, cross-sectional, quasi-experimental study was conducted
with 38 students with German as a second foreign language from the Bachelors degree in
Translation and Interpreting at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and ten
professional translators. In this paper, the results of one of the nine dependent variables of
the study are presented: the use of instrumental resources for the acquisition of cultural
knowledge, which is defined by Olalla-Soler (2017) as the information-seeking strategies
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